Work with Michelle
Professional Development for the Realities of Clinical Practice
Partnering with healthcare education programs and organizations to prepare emerging clinicians for the transition into practice and support their professional growth throughout their careers.
Through engaging presentations, interactive workshops, and ongoing mentorship, Michelle brings the human skills of healthcare into focus, including confidence, communication, professional identity, meaningful relationships, and career sustainability.
The Gap Clinical Training Rarely Fills
Clinical education prepares students to diagnose, treat, and make complex medical decisions. But becoming a clinician requires another set of skills that are often learned through trial and error.
How do you build confidence while still learning? Navigate uncertainty without questioning your competence? Recover from mistakes? Ask for help in environments where you're expected to have the answers?
These are not simply personality traits or skills clinicians should be expected to figure out on their own. They can be taught, practiced, and strengthened.
Drawing on decades of clinical experience and the science of applied positive psychology, Michelle helps healthcare education programs and organizations bring these essential human skills into professional development.
For PA, NP & Healthcare Education Programs
- Professional identity formation
- Transition from student to clinician
- Building confidence while acknowledging uncertainty
- Mentorship and asking for help
- Team communication and psychological safety
- Navigating feedback, mistakes, and the learning curve
For Healthcare Organizations
- Supporting early-career clinicians
- Mentorship and belonging
- Communication and professional relationships
- Sustainable career development
- Confidence and clinical uncertainty
- Meaning, mattering, and engagement at work
These offerings support clinicians as people. They complement, and do not replace, an organization's responsibility for healthy working conditions.
Offering 01
Keynote Speaking
Conversations That Change How Clinicians See Their Work
Michelle brings the perspective of an experienced clinician, the insights of applied positive psychology, and the voice of a trusted mentor to presentations that are thoughtful, engaging, and grounded in the realities of healthcare.
Her talks invite audiences to reconsider what it means to become a clinician, develop confidence, navigate challenges, and sustain a meaningful career.
Featured Keynote
Becoming a Clinician: Staying Human in Healthcare
The transition from clinical training to practice is more than a professional milestone. It is a period of profound personal and professional growth.
This presentation explores the human skills that support that transition, including navigating uncertainty, developing confidence without perfectionism, building meaningful professional relationships, and staying connected to purpose.
Presentations can be tailored for PA programs, health professions education, early-career clinicians, and healthcare organizations.
Offering 02
Interactive Workshops
Moving Beyond Inspiration to Practical Application
Understanding a concept is one thing. Knowing how to use it during a difficult clinical encounter, a challenging conversation, or a moment of professional self-doubt is another.
Michelle's workshops bring evidence-informed psychological skills into clinical life through realistic scenarios, guided reflection, discussion, and practical exercises.
Participants explore familiar challenges such as navigating uncertainty, receiving feedback, strengthening professional relationships, recognizing perfectionism, and maintaining meaning in demanding work.
Workshops can focus on individual topics or incorporate the six domains of REVAMP™, Michelle's framework for the human skills of sustainable clinical practice.
The goal is simple: participants leave with language, tools, and practices they can begin using in their next clinical experience or shift.
Offering 03
Mentor in Residence
Mentor in Residence is a developing partnership model that embeds an experienced clinician-mentor within a PA or NP program or healthcare organization for ongoing professional development.
Each partnership is shaped with you. Possible components include:
- Small-group mentorship
- Professional development conversations
- Faculty-supported student sessions
- Early-career clinician transition support
- Ongoing workshops or office-hour style sessions
Why Work with Michelle?
Clinical Perspective
Duke-trained physician assistant with decades of experience in primary care and dermatology.
Research-Informed Education
Translating research on human flourishing, professional growth, and well-being into practical learning experiences for clinicians.
A Distinctive Framework
Author of Staying Human in Healthcare, bringing the science of positive psychology into clinical practice through the REVAMP™ framework.
A Clinician-to-Clinician Approach
Practical education grounded in compassion, mentorship, honest conversations, and the realities of healthcare.